Laxdæla Saga eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 270 pages of information about Laxdæla Saga.

Laxdæla Saga eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 270 pages of information about Laxdæla Saga.
when he came to see her, and how he sat by his mother for a long time, and they talked of many things. [Sidenote:  Bolli questions his mother] Then Bolli said, “Will you tell me, mother, what I want very much to know?  Who is the man you have loved the most?” Gudrun answered, “Thorkell was the mightiest man and the greatest chief, but no man was more shapely or better endowed all round than Bolli.  Thord, son of Ingun, was the wisest of them all, and the greatest lawyer; Thorvald I take no account of.”  Then said Bolli, “I clearly understand that what you tell me shows how each of your husbands was endowed, but you have not told me yet whom you loved the best.  Now there is no need for you to keep that hidden any longer.”  Gudrun answered, “You press me hard, my son, for this, but if I must needs tell it to any one, you are the one I should first choose thereto.”  Bolli bade her do so.  Then Gudrun said, “To him I was worst whom I loved best.”  “Now,” answered Bolli, “I think the whole truth is told,” and said she had done well to tell him what he so much had yearned to know.  Gudrun grew to be a very old woman, and some say she lost her sight.  Gudrun died at Holyfell, and there she rests. [Sidenote:  The end of Gellir] Gellir, Thorkell’s son, lived at Holyfell to old age, and many things of much account are told of him; he also comes into many Sagas, though but little be told of him here.  He built a church at Holyfell, a very stately one, as Arnor, the Earls’ poet, says in the funeral song which he wrote about Gellir, wherein he uses clear words about that matter.  When Gellir was somewhat sunk into his latter age, he prepared himself for a journey away from Iceland.  He went to Norway, but did not stay there long, and then left straightway that land and “walked” south to Rome to “see the holy apostle Peter.”  He was very long over this journey; and then journeying from the south he came into Denmark, and there he fell ill and lay in bed a very long time, and received all the last rites of the church, whereupon he died, and he rests at Roskild.  Gellir had taken Skofnung with him, the sword that had been taken out of the barrow of Holy Kraki, and never after could it be got back.  When the death of Gellir was known in Iceland, Thorkell, his son, took over his father’s inheritance at Holyfell.  Thorgils, another of Gellir’s sons, was drowned in Broadfirth at an early age, with all hands on board.  Thorkell Gellirson was a most learned man, and was said to be of all men the best stocked of lore.  Here is the end of the Saga of the men of Salmon-river-Dale.

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Project Gutenberg
Laxdæla Saga from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.